


She-Ra x Battle Angel Alita: The Devil's Toys

by KriegsaffeNo9



Category: GUNNM | Battle Angel Alita, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Crying, Disembowelment, Exposition, Gen, Mash-up, Morally Ambiguous Character, Pastiche, for battle angel alita the manga not the movie, oh boy is it not canon typical violence for she ra, you're telling me there wasn't a Desty Nova tag before I did one?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 06:46:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18544444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KriegsaffeNo9/pseuds/KriegsaffeNo9
Summary: Glimmer and Bow ride out to intercept an attack on a Factory caravan and come face-to-face with the gigantic super-weapon She-Ra.  What can they do against Hordak's greatest weapon?A mash-up of She-Ra's characters into Battle Angel Alita's settings, part of a planned cycle of things I'm currently obsessed with being mashed up with other things I'm obsessed with.





	She-Ra x Battle Angel Alita: The Devil's Toys

The armored Factory car rest in the shadow of a plateau jutting from the tortured earth, one that cut the heat but not the bitter, powerful gusts of wind. The car creaked as the wind buffeted its sides; seated on the roof, Bow and Glimmer felt the whole thing tilt, just a little, in the mighty headwinds. Glimmer stared in fascination at a sky that was not dominated by the Crystal Castle, a noon that was not divided by its space elevator. Behind atmospheric haze they may as well not be there.

"Five minutes," Bow said. "Can you hear the trucks?"

"They're fusion-powered," Glimmer said. "Should be quiet 'til they're about a mile* off."

* _Mile: Colloquialism meaning "a mildly bothersome distance away."  Contrast "miles" for "a truly inconvenient distance away."_

Glimmer rocked back and forth in her seat; the music playing in her helmet was not enough to keep her nerves in check. Her brain was itchy, too. Was that a thing that could happen after registering as a Hunter-Warrior? Your brain getting itchy?

"Bow, did your brain itch after you got your barcode lasered on?" Glimmer said.

"Oh, definitely," Bow said. "It fades, though. Don't worry." He was reclining in his seat, arms crossed behind his head. How that was comfortable she couldn't imagine. Bow was a cyborg, almost a total conversion; his limbs and chest were total, with armored plates seamlessly plated under his skin. He couldn't part with his rippling, hard-won abs; they may even be the original muscles above the underlying mechanical structures.

"You cool in there?" Bow said.

"In what?"

"That tin can you're wearing."

"Oh, yeah! There's air conditioning!" Glimmer said. "I'd show you if, like, that was how it worked." Glimmer's power armor was her pride and joy, the end result of several months of hard work at strange hours. It all came to a head last night--strapping herself into the armor, registering as a hunter-warrior down at Factory 33, then camping out at the edge of Brightmoon.  When the recruitment truck drove up, she was first in line to help fight the Hordak Rebellion.

The other new hires waited in the shadow of the car, chatting or playing dice or doing anything to keep their minds off of the mission. Most of them were naked* and only a handful were cyborgized enough that it would matter in a fight.  They all wore the clothes they'd showed up in.  The only thing marking them as Rent-A-Guns were their RAG rigs, bulletproof powered vests with PDWs mounted on mechanical arms.  Guns were hellishly illegal in Brightmoon; the RAG rigs were locked onto the new hires, the mechanical arms keeping them from just taking the guns off and wandering off, and the explosive suicide charges ringing their armor's collar kept them motivated to stay and protect their armored car.  After all, if something should happen to the computer broadcasting to all their suits, the broadcast would stop, and the charges go off.  And that would just be a waste of everybody's time.

* _Naked: Without cybernetic augmentation_.

The Hordak Rebellion had been targeting Crystal Castle trains and convoys for supplies and to give incentive for the outlying Farms to join the cause.  Even the most individualistic and rugged of Farms might reconsider when valuable supplies suddenly stopped appearing at their doorstep--and if they put up a fight, the Horde had She-Ra.  If the rumors were true, nothing a Farm had could stand up to a giant war machine liberated from the Crystal Castle, powered by technology the lowly Earth could only dream of.  Thus the Farmboys and Farmgirls in their number had excellent reason to sign up to wield a real-life armor-piercing automatic weapon and fight alongside a pair of badass Hunter-Warriors.

(One of whom had been a Hunter-Warrior for under twelve hours... but whatever.)

The chance of She-Ra showing up to take a simple truck convoy was functionally zilch.  But Glimmer could dream, huh?  See what the Reflex Suit could really do.

The timer in the corner of her helmet's vision counted down to 3 minutes. Damn near on the dot, she heard a soft splashing noise to her left.

"The hell?" she said, glimpsing over. The soft chatter of the Rent-A-Guns had fallen away. Glimmer stood, the armored car gently rocking as her armored bulk shifted its balance. She hopped onto the ground, one step sending her over the edge and landing gracefully on the dusty earth. The RAGs' firearms were deploying. Two dozen men--and a handful of women--took their guns in hand.

Glimmer clucked her tongue and her sensors pinged the area. Atop the car, Bow stood up and drew a tech arrow from his quiver. His left arm deployed his bow, a vicious compound device that skirted Factory law against guns to a dangerous degree. They all aimed at the direction of the noise.  Standing where the noise had been was a Rent-A-Gun whose guts had fallen out of him through a hole slashed in his belly, just under his armor.

"Wait a sec," one of the RAGs said.  "He was right in the middle of our group.  You guys have been listening real close, right? We couldn't have been snuck up--"

One of the other RAGs, a farmboy, screamed and fired his gun. She spun and saw the man disappear under the truck, trying to swing his gun in the direction of whatever pulled him.

"Lay waste!" a farmgirl said, flopping onto her belly and emptying her magazine under the truck.

"Hey, wait--" Glimmer said. Why wasn't she getting any pings? She was looking for cyborgs, something made of that much metal should--

"Shit!" Bow said. She looked up and saw him leaping backwards off the truck, firing his compound bow at... something. She ran to catch him, and he landed on her shoulder and kicked off onto the ground, a bundle of arrows clenched in his fingers and one strung and pointed at the car.

"What the hell is--" Glimmer said, and the shape crested the truck and flung at her face.

The Reflex Suit, as she called it, was gently plugged into her spinal column with a series of nerve impulse reading pads. It read her intention and through simple quantum computing moved the suit's armatures in anticipation of where she needed them. It acted right now; before she realized it was what she wanted to do, she ducked, reached out and touched a machine body and in a smooth motion ducked beneath them and flung them behind her. The cyborg rolled, a blur of movement that did not glint in the mid-morning sun, and came to a halt at the end of ten claw marks in the cracked earth.

Her body was thin, lithe, built in a way suggesting a female body in sketch. A feline body, in fact, with scooplike cat-ears built into a leering headplate. The only hint she had been human once was her sneering tan face, her cybereyes--all four, including the two on her forehead, mounted on her headplate--were a shocking contrast of pale yellow and blue. A long, many-jointed tail waved behind her. Her hands were split into five humming metal claws; her feet, imitations of six-toed Hemingway cat forepaws, likewise featuring five vibrotalons.

"Buenos dias," the cat-cyborg smirked.

Everybody present opened fire and the cyborg danced, bullets whizzing past or ricocheting off the curved edges of her cyberbody, and she moved so fast that Bow's explosive arrow practically gave her a boost in jump-height when she vaulted out of its effective radius on a cloud of shrapnel.

The rent-a-gunners clicked empty, the autoloaders began their work, and the cat-thing sailed through the air, claws ready.

And Glimmer was moving, and she barely grew cognizant of her own plans until she was in the air on a collision course with the enemy.

She met the cat-machine in mid-air. The cat grabbed onto her leading fist, climbing onto her fast as a phosphene* specter. Glimmer spun with her. The Reflex suit was rotund with armor and artificial muscle, an exaggeration of her own plump body; it must have been quite a sight to see spinning so effortlessly in the air, moving with the scampering cat. She landed on her feet, the cat-cyborg in the air, ready to slice into the power supply on her suit's lower back, and Bow struck her with a concussive arrow, knocking her off.

* _Phosphene: The perception of light without attendant source. Usually attributed to pressure on the eyes._

"Shoot, dammit!" Bow said, and a punishing rain of lead hit the cat as she tried to leap away.

Her body was mostly ceramic; it was thus lightweight and flexible and crazy-fast. But the curtain-fire chipped away at her defenses, leaving her shell pockmarked with rounds. Nearly as soon as the fusillade began, it died down, and more reloading commenced. The cat was on her knees; a trickle of blood leaked under her visor at her eye.

Glimmer tromped up to her--she didn't bother running--and lifted her by the neck, triumphant, ready to punch her out if need be. "For an assassin," Glimmer said, her voice deepend by her suit's voice box, "you really like making a show of yourself."

The cat cyborg was smiling. "Assassin? Hell," she said, "I'm just the distraction."

"The dist..." Glimmer said, and there was a horrible sound of divided earth behind her.

Something had cut through the plateau in a long, diagonal gash; in the next few seconds, a matching gash made an X, an asterisk, and an explosion of force sent a hail of stones over the Factory forces. Glimmer ran for Bow, who ran for her, and covered his smaller body while waiting for the rain of pulverized stone to end.

Nobody had died, as far as her readouts read, but quite a few had been bashed up fiercely, and the car was half-buried in debris. Tragically the cat-cyborg made it out good and healthy.

"What was that?!" Bow said, brushing dust and pebbles from his hair.

"The pride of Hordak's army," the assassin said, in a breathy sigh. "You're in the shadow of the She-Ra now."

The billowing dust faded, and a thing out of ancient myth stomped onto the low, wide cairn that used to be the plateau. It was maybe five and a half meters tall, built in the shape of a goddess or valkyrie--broad shoulders and hips with a faint pinch at the waist. It--she?--had a handsome, honest face of synthetic skin and humanlike eyes, giving the impression that her cyberbody was a colossal suit of armor. Electrum plating adorned her winged helm and gave the appearance of broad shoulder pads and gauntlets. The symbol of the Crystal Castle reached from her collar to her midriff; it was defiled by a crossed-out O, a sunburst or target perhaps. In her hands was a sword nearly a third her total height, its blade a pair of edged prongs shimmering with electromagnetic force, its pommel a massive fission battery.

As the pattern of electromagnetism changed in the hollow of the blade, meters and meters of glimmering gold-colored cables serving as hair billowed as if in the wind, producing a hellish hissing sound; a dust-choked, tattered red cape billowed at her back as a shot-to-hell skirt fluttered with it. The body beneath was faintly worn, but undamaged.

"For the honor of Hordak," she said, raising her gigantic sword, "I am She-Ra."

Glimmer felt her throat close in panic.

"Oh no," Bow said, softly.

Three of the RAGs lost it and ran. She-Ra planted her sword in the ground and began her speech just as the RAGs escaped the range of the armored truck's command signal; the explosives in their armor detonated, blowing their heads to mulch.

"Citizens of Brightmoon and the Castle Farms," She-Ra said, "you are being offered a chance to escape your life of drudgery. Hordak battles the injustice of the Crystal Castle to bring about a new age of freedom! We will labor under its shadow no more. We will take back our works for ourselves. We will not bow to fascism no matter how powerful its weapons. For the peoples' weapons are mightier still..." She took her sword in both hands, the electromagnetic field crackling at her fingertips. "...as they are wielded for a cause of justice."

The cat wriggled free of Glimmer's grasp--not difficult given how completely and utterly flummoxed she was--and scampered between the rent-a-guns. She jumped at the She-Ra, who extended, just so, their fingers; the cat landed delicately and clambered up to her shoulder like a pet.

"Nobody needs to die today," She-Ra said. "Who will join me?"

Glimmer took a step forward.

"Glim?" Bow said, _sotto voce_. "You're not...?"

"Hey!" Glimmer said, pointing at the She-Ra. The titan machine looked at her. Eyes bigger than her head met her gaze. "You talk a big game for someone whose boss bullies around citizens just trying to live their lives. Your big fancy sword doesn't scare me. How 'bout we throw down?"

"Oh, good," Bow said, "you're doing something substantially worse."

The war machine smiled. "I take your challenge gladly." She held out her free hand and gestured: come here. The rent-a-guns parted to give her a way through.

"Bow, watch my back," Glimmer said, and charged.

"Aw, dang it!" Bow said, nocking an arrow and training his enhanced eyes on the war machine. In particular he highlighted the skittish catroid.

Glimmer jumped for the She-Ra's knees, assist boosters thrusting her at ballistic speed. The She-Ra shifted her positioning and Glimmer landed exactly where she aimed: her cape. She scampered up it, crawling through a hole made by what she guessed was a cannon and onto the machine's billowing hair. She closed her eyes and tried to will the liquid between her ears into thinking she was standing still instead of getting thrashed around at high speeds. It didn't quite work, but when the strand she clung to flung upwards, she let go and rocketed at the She-Ra's head.

She flew through Bow's exploding arrowhead--her armor could take it easily, but the cat couldn't, and so she was flung out of her intended intercept course--and at the She-Ra's eye, leg-first, ready to knock out one of her optics.

The She-Ra turned, just so, and Glimmer's kick skidded along an armored eye socket. She grabbed at the bridge of the She-Ra's nose, finding no purchase, and tried to right herself before the She-Ra smacked her with a headbutt.

Her armor rang with impact warning alarms. Her entire body felt like a bruise. In this haze, lost as a dropped balloon, the She-Ra had an easy target.

The war machine raised her sword and casually swung it through Glimmer.

Maybe she didn't really remember the moment; maybe it was a fabrication, an extrapolation. Bow never talked about it. But she swore, some nights, that she remembered every moment of the attack, and most importantly, its immediate aftermath.

Looking down at the sky, she saw a long red smear like a stroke with a great brush. She saw her right arm flying away on an oil-leak trickle of blood; she saw her lower half drifting away, intestine blowing in the wind like pink ribbons. She saw the She-Ra, who had moved with the effort and grace of a teacher demonstrating with a ruler. Her eyes--those titan eyes--were a burning shade of blue. The last thing she remembered as the ink-stroke turned into a rain of blood was the expression of the She-Ra. She was not haughty, or delighted, or furious.

She was...

...heartbroken.

* * *

Glimmer's upper body hit the ground with the noise of a dropped refrigerator. Her lower half landed guts-first a meter away; and then the rain of blood spattered across both halves in a fan. Bow ran for her, screaming her name, damn near on all fours as he reached to cradle her upper body.

Her suit had clamped shut around the wound, but the running lights were blinking red. He flipped open her visor; her eyes were open and staring in a ghostly-pale face. She was hyperventilating, her eyes unfocused, her mouth flecked with pink foam.  He had no idea what the hell he was going to do.

The rent-a-guns were, to put it bluntly, freaking the fuck out.

"Please," She-Ra said, her voice faltering. "We won't need to lose anyone else--"

There was a sudden rumbling, and the truck convoy rushed past. The She-Ra watched it thunder off to the distance.

"Damn," she said, softly as a machine her size could say.

"Heh," Catra said, climbing back onto her shoulder. "They'll just get knocked over by the ambush a few klicks north."

She-Ra regained her composure, planting her sword dangerously near the armored car. "My associate here can deactivate the computers in this car, enabling you to leave as you please. You can join us or return to your homes. I have no interest in harming you further."

"Do I gotta?" Catra whined, bumping against She-Ra's cheek.

The RAGs spoke among themselves, or tried to. Bow barely sorted it out as he interfaced with Glimmer's suit, trying to activate any on-board medical systems, anything that could buy her some time, anything that could do anything. Dammit, they were so far away from a cyberdoc... what in the hell could they do?

They'd need an--

"Is that an angel?" one of the rent-a-guns said.

She was pointing; Bow followed her finger.

Framed against the sun was a humanoid figure, great wings like a dragonfly spread against the sky. It was bearing some massive thing at its shoulder, something that broke up the silhouette; a line bright as the sun poured into the thing, turning the angel's silhouette vantablack.

Catra's visor-eyes shone.  "Oh, no."

The She-Ra's hair fell flat against her back.  "Everyone, get down!" she said, stepping in front of the car.  The prongs of her sword spread wide and an electromagnetic shield glinted, forming tall and wide; she took a knee, the better to protect the vehicle.  Bow covered Glimmer and ducked; the other RAGs followed suit.

The sun-line vanished.  The angel flitted a hundred meters away in an instant.  The She-Ra moved, but not fast enough.

There was a terrific noise; the sky cracked open and the armored car became a fireball.  The force shoved the She-Ra back several meters, even with the protection of her sword.

Bow stared in mute shock.  All around him and Glimmer, the rent-a-guns perished. The She-Ra broke up the shockwave, prevented them from being tossed away, but the signal was gone, and in a wave every last person they'd picked up for their journey died, each one signing the earth with their brains.

The angel descended, landing gently behind Bow and Glimmer.  Her armor was form-fitting, her face hidden by an optics-studded mask.  Her weapon was as long as she was tall, a hideously complex super-weapon that floated on repulsor jets; an attendant drone hovered overhead, ready to refuel it if need be.  The angel removed her mask, and to Bow's numb shock he recognized who had just killed almost everyone present.

She-Ra looked at the angel. "You're an agent of the Crystal Castle..." she said.

Glimmer's mother nodded.

"What is that weapon?" She-Ra said.

"One of many," Angella said. "Your rebellion is foolish. You raise peasant arms against a force unequaled on Earth." She narrowed her eyes. "You pilot a discarded toy and think you can stand against us."

She-Ra matched her gaze, but said nothing.

"'He who plays with the devil's toys will be brought by degrees to wield his sword,*'" Angella said. She let go of the solenoid quench gun; the drone picked it up. "Think on whose toy you're playing with... child."

_*Thomas Fuller, regarding the seductive nature of witchcraft. Often misattributed to R. Buckminster Fuller, the quote nonetheless calls attention to an ethical question regarding scientific discoveries that may be used for ill_.

She leaned down, her wings folding away from the dusty earth; she scooped up her child in her arms.

"Mama," Glimmer whimpered.

"My baby," Angella said, touching her daughter's face.  "My poor baby."  She clutched Glimmer to her chest; tears streaked from her eyes, dripping onto her daughter's armor.  "It's not too late.  I promise..."

The drone prodded at Bow, who hesitantly climbed onto its back and held on tight.

Angella flipped her mask back over her face, and with a sound like the first note in a cherubic choir she and her weapon soared into the air and back towards Brightmoon and the comforting shadow of the Crystal Castle.

She-Ra stood, keeping her blade planted in the ground.

"Madre de dios," Catra whispered. "Did you get the readings coming off that gun?"

"I caught enough," She-Ra said.

"Hordak's gotta know about this," Catra said.  "...shit, that means we're gonna have to file a report."

"Yeah... one of us has to, anyway.  _Not it_."

"What do you--oh, come on!"

* * *

A long ways away, Adora sent She-Ra into autopilot and unplugged from the telepresence console.

Her hair was plastered to her head. The connector faintly burned in her spinal port; it shouldn't have, she had done much more strenuous combat under far more dire circumstances without it getting hot. And yet it burned.

She looked around the control tent, at the usual hum of activity as men and women swarmed to ensure their great war-machine was running at full capacity. One of the junior assistants--that is, a young child whose family had left a Farm to join the Hordak Rebellion--handed her a canteen. She took it with a muttered "Thank you" and a salute with the canteen before taking a long draft.

Her throat was scorched and her heart was heavy.  And it would be hours before Catra would be back. There were strict orders not to plug into She-Ra unless it was absolutely necessary. She-Ra was a black box on legs, and understanding her was a work in progress. There would be no undue stress on the machine.

At least, not on the machine in the field.

She unplugged and left for her tent. She couldn't sleep, but she would pretend.  She walked past salutes and cheers and at least one earnest prayer and into the sealed, air-conditioned inflatable tent, the most luxe dwelling in this mobile unit that wasn't owned by Hordak.  She fell flat on her small bed and tried to unclench, her body's actuators relaxing, her alloy muscles losing just a little tension.  But not all the way.  They were faintly prepared to spring to life and kick ass at all times in a way that meat-muscle never was.  She had been a cyborg for a little over four months at this point.  No other 'borg she met seemed to feel the same problems.

When she was She-Ra, she was God, and all trivial body-problems vanished, replaced with the problems of being God.

The only time she was happy was when she was with Catra.

She would not see Catra for hours yet.

No, she couldn't even pretend to sleep.

* * *

Not far away, Hordak sat in the mobile bunker. He was alone, receiving reports and updates over wireless communication.

His hand rested on the _yang_ -shaped telepresence communicator embedded in his chest. It was always hidden under armor, of course; only his innermost circle were privy to his greatest secret, and even they were only partially aware of what it meant.

He knew how She-Ra worked because he worked on the same principles.  He could only free so much wisdom from his other half, though, and so she remained an enigma.  Finding Adora had been a miracle, the key that fit in the war machine's lock; it was karma that brought the orphan child to that awful battle, that led her to the cyberdoc tents, that led her to testing compatibility with She-Ra.  Karma was the mechanism of humanity.  He was born from karma and locked in an eternal, vicious struggle against the karma of his sister.

The karma of his other half.

She was speaking now--

* * *

"Please," Angella said. Her composure was not broken, but it was cracked. Her voice was controlled but she was crying steadily and without shame. Out of her armor, she was just another woman, naked and afraid. "There has to be something."

Glimmer was alive, but barely.  The body, as Entrapta had put it, had been a total wash--too many internal injuries for even a partial rescue.  Angella couldn't watch her perform the surgery that saved her daughter's life and plugged her disembodied head into a machine that fed her brain oxygenated blood and glucose solution.  She couldn't bear to look at Glimmer's head in full, casual display on the operating table Entrapta was eating at.

On two fingertips, Entrapta balanced a pair of tiny cupcakes decorated to look like a smiling spider. "We-e-ee-ll," she said, "I may have a body for her. It's a little scary, but you like scary, right? No, wait, that's the other guy I've been talking to.  You wanna keep it safe, I can mail order some decent parts for... not cheap, but well within your means.  You run a Factory, you're filthy rich, ain't you?"

"Material wealth is nothing compared to the wellness of my daughter," Angella said.  "What body do you have?"

"Well, it's a little bit nuts, so let me build it up for you.  Imagine--"

"Tell me now," Angella said, reaching for a coilgun at her hip.

"It's a Berserker," Entrapta said.

The three words hung in the air like poison.

"I know. Scary thought, right? Puttin' your girl's head on a body like that? And just think, she might wake up and go: wow, I can totally get revenge now!" She spun around in her chair, her enormously long pigtails spiraling around her. "Which she totally could. You know, if she wanted to, and... I mean, if you wanted to wait, I could order her, like, a totally ordinary high-end body.  You can tuck her into bed knowing she ain't got any reason to get back out of it. She'd be fine and you'd be fine and it'd all be fi-i-ine."

Angella turned away from Entrapta, from her daughter, and put her hand on her chest. She felt the yin-shaped transmitter embedded there, and wondered, briefly, what her brother must think of this.  Surely he had eyes in She-Ra's eyes.  He must know, or would know soon.

"I could ask you to order a body," Angella said.  "But it would not be fine.  We live in a time of war."

"Well," Entrapta said, "between a floating city and a bunch of angry farmers."

"It is more of a war than you know," Angella said. "I wanted my daughter to be free from it... but it seems that is not her karma."

Entrapta chuckled. "Ah, karma... baby, you never write me." She stopped her spinning.  She nodded; her fancy goggles couldn't draw attention away from the mark of the Crystal Castle tattooed on her forehead.  "You don't know half of what I now know about Karmatron Dynamics.  It makes unified field theory look like the four elements.  Glimmer's a sweet girl, but like everyone else, she's fighting tooth and nail against what she's supposed to be.  You give her the Berserker Body, and karma is gonna catch fire and burn."

"I am aware," Angella said.

"No, kid.  You're not."  Entrapta took her goggles off.  "Go ahead.  Tell me yes."

"Yes."

"Louder..."

"Give my daughter the Berserker Body, Entrapta."

Entrapta smirked.  "Say my name.  My  _real_ name."

Angella looked away.

"Call me Desty Nova.  'Eternal light'."

* * *

In her dreams, Glimmer was dying;

and in her dreams, she was reborn,

walking fury,

the living flame,

eternal light.

...

  
And she awoke,

[and her dream came true](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqoyKzgkqR4).


End file.
